New Type of Flame Could Reduce Emissions & Clean Oil Spills and Other Tech News on 11-Aug-2016
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New Type of Flame
Could Reduce Emissions & Clean Oil Spills
A major problem with burning any type of material is the
soot, or residue, left over. But what if a flame produced barely any soot at
all? Meet ‘Blue Whirl’ – a new type of flame that products little to no soot.
The researchers hail from University of Maryland’s A. James Clark School of
Engineering, and posted their paper in the Proceedings
of the National Academy of Science journal
“Fire whirls are more efficient than other forms of
combustion because they produce drastically increased heating to the surface of
fuels, allowing them to burn faster and more completely. In our experiments
over water, we’ve seen how the circulation fire whirls generate also helps to
pull in fuels. If we can achieve a state akin to the blue whirl at larger
scale, we can further reduce airborne emissions for a much cleaner means of
spill cleanup,” said Michael Gollner, Fire Protection Engineering professor and
Co-author of the study, “This is the first time fire whirls have been studied
for their practical applications.
We’re Getting Closer
to a Universal Cure for Allergies
Q3 Technologies is big into healthcare, and is constantly looking
for innovations that could change the medical industry for good. At the University
of Michigan and Northwestern University, researchers are doing just that, and
are very close to finding a permanent cure for allergies. They are doing this
by coating allergens with nanoparticles, effectively disguising them as harmless
dust particles & allowing them to pass through to our learning centers.
Their research is published in a study on Pnas.org.
“It’s a universal treatment. Depending on what allergy you
want to eliminate, you can load up the nanoparticle with ragweed pollen or a
peanut protein. The vacuum-cleaner cell presents the allergen or antigen to the
immune system in a way that says, ‘No worries, this belongs here’,” said
Stephen Miller, Author & Judy Gugenheim Research Professor of
Microbiology-Immunology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.
“The findings represent a novel, safe and effective
long-term way to treat and potentially ‘cure’ patients with life-threatening respiratory
and food allergies. This may eliminate the need for life-long use of medications
to treat lung allergy,” he added.
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